PC mods

I'm building a new computer case. Read here LINK

the RIAA and the scheme of things

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/16/007257&from=rss

RIAA Says Ripping CD's to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use

Things get dumber and dumber with these people. They're saying that the CD I purchase cannot be transferred to a less damage-prone media? They claim that "Even if CD's are damaged they are readily available at affordable prices." Yea right. $16.99 for a CD is affordable?

Here's where my rant starts. The music industry is screwing itself. Not Napster, not Grokster, not the consumers. The labels that are involved in this activism against music sharing are the same labels that market pop music. They invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on putting artists in top studios with top producers to churn out an album with a chart-topping hit and 12 crappy songs. People go out and buy the album and are disappointed! The problem is record labels producing hits rather than records.

Labels wouldn't have to worry about a "drop in revenues" if they focused on careers instead of hits. How do they expect to make any money back when they go and spend half a million dollars on a music video for a band on their first album in addition to the staggering amount of funds put into producing and marketing. That's why their revenues are dropping, not because of people downloading some songs on the internet.

In every other retail market, the consumer dictates what the supplier makes. But in the music world, it's bass-akwards and the labels try to tell us what we want. Granted, pay-per-song services do have their benefits because you don't have to waste money on any songs you don't want. However, most of these songs are in a proprietary format that can only be used with specific players and devices, thus again limiting your right to play the music when and where you want.

The other issues is that CD's are incredibly prone to scratches and other types of damage. That's why people rip their CD's, make copies, and transfer them to portable devices. Now they're trying to take away our ability to protect our investment. Even though it's often an investment in crap.

A long time ago you could send tapes and records back to the manufacturer if they became damaged and receive a replacement for the cost of shipping. Music labels knew back then that music was an investment and that they would make money from the continued success from artists.

Somewhere along the line things got royally fucked up and we're in a world of mess right now. For me, I sample songs from an album online with a P2P program for free. If they're good, I'll spend the money and buy the CD. If it sucks, I'm not going to waste my money. That's the label's fault for making a bad record, not mine. I will not be punished for sampling a record that sucks.

bleh

Well I spent about 12 hours playing computer games today. I'm pretty sure that's a bad thing. The only thing I ate today was a personal pizza. Needless to say, I'm not tired, and I kinda feel like shit.

The lesson: Your body needs sunlight and food and varying interaction!

Interestingly enough, I once spent 12 hours in front of a computer writing a last minute beast of a paper. I ate alot of food that day and felt great when I went to bed.

Dont' forget to pinch yourself on the way out.

What is this all about? And what is this?

The notion of a God and creationism seems too extravagant. The notion of pure simple biological evolutionary life seems too bland. Are we souls or spirits living the human experience...and is that merely a blink of our ultimate existence? I had a wild dream not too long ago that I dismissed as just a dream originally.

But I think now that dreams might be more than just dreams. The only difference between waking consciousness and sleeping consciousness is the inhibiting of memory receptors (awake) or inhibiting of sense receptors (sleep). The theory is that your dreams are a crazy cocktail of memories. Some say they're random, others say they might be purposeful somehow. Dreams are just a place where things can happen that normally wouldn't, or couldn't, in the waking world. That makes it an entirely new dimension of life.

Back to that dream...I feel I was touched by something I cannot now imagine. BUT THAT'S JUST THE THING... I really CAN imagine it, but not when I'm awake. I don't know quite what it is until I have the opportunity, and the priviledge, to sink back into the state of new dimensions.

Not to say I'm leaving my body when I dream or something like that. But rather things that come up in my dreams that I can't and haven't thought of when I'm awake. Like the presense I felt in my dream...how can this distinct and somehow familiar presence exist in my dreams if I've never fathomed such a thing when I'm awake?

This frustrate me because I know there's more out there, in fact, there's more right here where we are. Do we reach for it or just pretend it's not there? If there's 100,000,000,000x more to life, do we live out our human existence and wait for what's next? Can we decide when we want to move on? Do we control our destiny and our own deaths?

I have a thousand more questions I wish I could ask and I wish even more that they could be answered...

I'm not as thought as I dumb I was...

I always thought I was kind of a dumbass. Apparently not compared to some of the people in my Adv. Writing for the Media lab. I swear they must act like retards on purpose.

Imagine this: You are GIVEN a bunch of information about a potential news story and have to write a lead for it. One sentence in active voice that describes the most important aspects of the story. DON'T MAKE STUFF UP!!! Half the people in my class were coming up with job titles and accusations that weren't even listed. How freaking easy is it to regurgitate some information in an organized manner? How hard is it to make up completely new information? Exactly! Why not do the easy thing and regurgitate?

Anyways, aside from regurgitating, college sucks...it has for the past three-and-a-half years and will for the next two-and-a-half.

Computer nerd

For those who give a crap, I recently built a new computer. It's pretty damn decent. Specifications are as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego @ 2.75GHz
Patriot PC3200 1GB (2x512MB) @ 229MHz
Foxconn NF4K8AC-RS-1.0
Leadtek PX6600GT 128mb PCI-e @ 570/1200
Seagate Barracuda w/ NCQ, 80gb
Aspire X-Dreamer case
Aspire CD-RW/DVD combo drive
FSP 400w dual 12v PSU
Sound Blaster Extigy

What about the environment, George?

I noticed that during the entire State of the Union speech, GWB failed to mention anything about global warming. He did admit that we are addicted to oil, and I must give him credit for that: at least he understands that part. However, Tony Blair can't be the only leader speaking out for stricter pollution controls. Most controls in place in the U.S. today are voluntary and until GWB starts making more mandatory emission cuts, they're just not going to happen. It is my belief that until oil becomes more of an inconvenience to the world, we're not going to get far enough fast enough with new fuel technologies.

The fact is global warming isn't a theory. It's a widely accepted scientific fact and just because GWB and his administration don't care to acknowledge it doesn't mean it's of no concern.

Damn dog

This is my cat, Dagger. He hates it when the dog barks.


ears at half mast...

Opera

I hope the Opera web browser people don't get mad at me, but I'm really beginning to hate this brower. I love it for it's faster loading times and relatively easy-to-use GUI...but it just doesn't cut it. It rarely seems to load pages correctly. Text either runs off the edge so you can't read it, or many features don't show up at all. In fact, I had to run IE just to post this blog.

Now some could say that's the site developer's fault for not testing it with Opera. Others could argue that Opera is an inferior program. Well, I'm not here to place any blame on anyone for anything. I just don't like Opera anymore, that's all I'm saying.

The reason I ditched IE is basically the lack of features and plugins. My love of add-ons and plugins led me to FireFox, which I really enjoy. Unfortunately, my laptop is so junked up and starved for processing power that it runs too slow on my system. My other computer runs FireFox well, and I would highly recommend it for a system with at least a 2.0GHz or equivalent processor and 1GB of RAM. It will make your browsing experience much more enjoyable.

Go here to decide for yourself:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

I can't believe it...

The first (and quite likely the last) smart thing our President has said and done...

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/02/01/ap2492673.html

"Whether people want to recognize it or not, we're in a competitive world," Bush said in Nashville, Tenn., where he expanded on the themes of his State of the Union address. "Some will say it's so competitive, `Let's withdraw and protect ourselves.'

"That's not my attitude. My attitude is that it's competitive, let's get in the position where we can out-compete the rest of the world, and the most important place is going to be to make sure our kids have got the skills to fill the jobs in the 21st century. If our kids don't have those skills, those jobs will go somewhere else."

...except for that part when he said "withdraw and protect ourselves." because I didn't see that part and I can only imagine how funny and retarded he must have said it. Plus, when I really think about the whole speech, he said alot of things funny and retarded.